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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362942">Stray Bullets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla'>ShrimpZilla</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:40:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,673</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362942</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>MacCready joins the Gunners and finds out he isn't the only foul-mouthed little sniper.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stray Bullets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for the fallout kink meme.</p>
<p>please consider checking out my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/shrimpzilla</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>MacCready frowns when Winlock leads him over to a f… to a kid. She’s swimming in her uniform even though it’s belted and cuffed a million different ways. It makes him feel a little better about how big the one they’d given him fit. At least the hat fit his head. Hers is only hanging on by the way she’s got it perched against her ears. She’s not a mungo, or at least she doesn’t look it. Looks like she could still be living in Little Lamplight, which fills MacCready with a strange sense of homesickness and hurt pride.</p>
<p>“Who the fuck’s this piece of shit?” She spits, thumbing the brim of her hat up so it almost falls off the back of her head. MacCready works his face into the serious frown he’s been working on. The one that says he’s a bloodthirsty sniper and not here to, uh, play around.</p>
<p>“New sniper,” Winlock answers casually. He gestures between them. Some weak form of introduction. MacCready knows better than to be the one to say his name first. He sets his shoulders and makes a bit of a show about looking down his nose at her. It isn’t often he gets to do that, after all.</p>
<p>“We don’t need a new fucking sniper. That’s bullshit. Guy looks like a fucking pansy ass crotch licker to me.”</p>
<p>“What your language,” MacCready grumbles, a little insulted and a little amused and a little jealous. She scowls at him, cheekbones sharp under malnourished, sallow skin. A hint of color strikes high under her eyes and on the bits of her ears he can make out through the tangled grease streaks of her hair.</p>
<p>“Who do you think you are? My fucking dad?” Generic as it is the barb strikes MacCready in the chest. He grinds his teeth and tries not to think too hard about Duncan. This girl is a fu… She’s really annoying. “Newsflash, fuck ass, I don’t listen to my scumbag old man and I sure as shit ain’t gonna be listening to any words of wisdom coming out of your pussy lipped face.” She storms off with a huff, boots MacCready suspects are too big for her clomping loudly. Winlock makes a noise that might be amusement, but by the time MacCready takes his eyes of the kid’s back the other man’s face is back to being screwed up tight.</p>
<p>“Real friendly bunch,” MacCready deadpans.</p>
<p>“That’s just Olive. Girls her age are all kinds of crazy.” MacCready doesn’t know exactly what her age is, but he thinks of Lucy all the same because, fuck, damn, it isn’t a lot that doesn’t bring her to the forefront of his mind. Lucy never would’ve worked with a crew like the Gunners. Lucy never would’ve let him. The guilt and shame of it all makes him feel sick. Winlock doesn’t seem to notice. “She’s a sniper too so you’ll have to get some kind of peace going with her.”</p>
<p>“Aren’t there other snipers to work with?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but Olive’s the best we got. So you wanna get teamed with her because it means someone thinks you’ve got something worthwhile.”</p>
<p>MacCready frowns deeper, something he didn’t think was possible. This sh… This just kept getting better and better.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Olive hates him. She hates his stupid pointy face. She hates that even though he’s smaller than nearly everyone he’s still taller than her. She hates the way he gets a scrunched up look on whenever she talks. As if she doesn’t have anything worth hearing! At least she’s not the one with a mouth like a fucking baby sucking down soap.</p>
<p>Right now what she hates most is that he doesn’t totally blow at shooting. Fact is, he’s good. Closer to her level than she’d like to admit. But not on it. Or better. No fucking way. She’d just put a bullet to her own head if that were the case. Honor killing or whatever the shit.</p>
<p>“Impressed yet?” He says. She can’t see his face, her eye is screwed up to her rifle’s sights, but she can hear the damned smirk in his voice. Her stomach hurts from sitting so stupid close to him. All the garbage she’d shoveled into it earlier rebelling on her because, fuck!, he’s good. He’s good and it’s got her all thrown off her game and this isn’t how this was supposed to go. She takes her hands off her rifle and flexes her fingers, wipes the sweaty grime away on her uniform leg.</p>
<p>“Shut the fuck up, MacCready.” She outranks him, kinda sorta, so she feels totally within her right to throw out orders. Of course, shutting up isn’t exactly an order. And he doesn’t really have to listen to her, actually. But he does. A little. He doesn’t make a verbal response anyway, just some noise at the back of his throat that sounds a little like he feels some kinda winner. Olive bristles, opens her mouth to snap something else, but he snipes a target right out from under her. Far back, barely out, she actually didn’t think he could see it from his angle. Heat flashes up her spine. “Fuck,” she mutters, feeling worse and worse the longer they’re out here together. Maybe it’s the rads? Maybe she’s getting sick?</p>
<p>“Yeah,” MacCready mutters back.</p>
<p>She fights the urge to groan. This guy is fucking good.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>They have him just clearing out ferals. It feels more like target practice than anything real, but an order is an order and at least they’re paying him for this too. MacCready sets up on his stomach on the busted up remains of some sort of raised up road. He presses his eye to the scope and tracks some targets idly. He wonders, briefly and without any real emotion, if there’s other snipers set up somewhere.</p>
<p>As if he’s summoned her Olive plops down only about a foot from him.</p>
<p>He looks over, mouth twitching out of its impassive, professional line into the irritated snarl the kid’s pretty good at getting out of him. He tries not to take it personal. She burrows herself under everyone’s skin. She’s probably the loudest, foulest mouthed, littlest sniper he’s ever come across and it’s really saying a lot cause he’s Robert Joseph MacCready. She snorts out a giggle and MacCready’s mouth involuntarily tweaks itself into a smile even as suspicion laces his guts.</p>
<p>“What’s so funny?” She traces a ring around her eye with one dirty, bitten up finger. MacCready mirrors the movement, finds the skin around his eye slick and his fingertip dark with grease or paint or something. “Are fu…” He growls. “Come on!”</p>
<p>“Calm your tits. It’s just a joke.” She waves him away and starts setting up her rifle. MacCready doesn’t know what he’s gotta do to get himself out of her sights. She treats him like he’s got a target on his back. It’s hazing, ribbing, but it’s overkill. It’s like she’s trying to drive him away under the ruse of being some… messed up form of friendly.</p>
<p>Well, Robert Joseph MacCready isn’t a quitter. Not when there’s caps on the line anyway.</p>
<p>“It’s a stupid joke,” he grumbles and wipes off his eye. He looks at her and she looks back, eyes too big in her starved out face. She shakes her head and rubs a finger down her cheek. He grumbles again and tries to wipe it off without smudging it further. “You’re,” he pauses and takes a calming breath, “so freaking annoying.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Dad, that’s what I’m aiming for.” The hairs on the back of his neck rise. He presses his face to his scope, forgetting about the stupid prank and suddenly needing his attention wholly on just doing a task. Maybe Olive notices she’s gotten to him. Maybe she notices that every darn time she calls him dad it takes the piss out of him. “I really was just shitting around with the charcoal. Figured like, I dunno, we’re the only two fuckers in this stupid cunt club worth the shitty uniform. May as well be… what’s the fucking phrase? Civil to each other?”</p>
<p>“How old are you?” He asks without moving.</p>
<p>“Seventeen.” MacCready puts a bullet between a feral’s eyes, sighs a little and tilts his head just enough to put Olive in his sight. She’s got her temple resting against her scope, watching him with a wariness he recognizes all too well. She’s not a kid, not really, not by Little Lamplight rules, but out here it feels like anyone younger than him really is just a kid.</p>
<p>“You’re not that much younger than me,” he chides.</p>
<p>“You look like fucking shit then,” she responds matter-of-factly. Right, he forgot for a split second he was talking to a … that he was talking to Olive.</p>
<p>“I don’t like it when you call me dad.”</p>
<p>“That’s why I do it, dumbass.” She puts her eye to her scope and picks a shot out quick. MacCready watches the recoil jostle her shoulder in way that’s probably pretty painful.</p>
<p>“Your form sucks,” he says and puts his attention back to the job at hand. Next to him he feels Olive’s irritated glance. He guesses he’s good at getting under skin too. Maybe it’s a sniper thing.</p>
<p>“I taught myself,” her tone’s a little defensive. MacCready takes down a feral in a tattered pink dress. A bullet from Olive strikes another in something that might’ve been yellow once.</p>
<p>“Does your shoulder just, like, always hurt or what?”</p>
<p>“Everything always hurts. What’s it matter?”</p>
<p>“Wow, pretty soft of you to say.” Olive reaches out her small fist and tries to beat it against his shoulder. MacCready jerks himself away in time to just avoid it. He laughs, and to his surprise Olive laughs too.</p>
<p>“Whatever.” She hits two targets in quick succession. “Four on two.”</p>
<p>“Like I trust you to keep count.”</p>
<p>Civil to each other.</p>
<p>Who would’ve guessed it.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Olive still hates MacCready, she reassures herself as she watches the team that’d been out pile back in to the base they’ve set up in for the moment. She still hates his stupid face with its dumbass blue eyes and dirty facial hair. He’s got messed up teeth and he doesn’t curse and he made her fix the way she lets her gun rest. Her shoulder doesn’t jar so much when she fires. She doesn’t need to pop and crack it all the time. It only hurts when rad storms are rolling through, but she’d never tell a piece of crap like MacCready any of that. He’d just let it go to his head. And besides, she still hates him. So why would she wanna say anything that might be like a thank you or whatever?</p>
<p>Stupid fucking MacCready.</p>
<p>She ignores the cool relief that settles over her joints when she finally catches sight of him, bringing up the rear of the group he’d been with. He doesn’t look happy, but she figures it’s just that fucked thing he does with his face where he thinks it’s making him look tough. He looks like a fucking idiot, but it’s funny so she smiles. Not cause he’s there and alive and looking pretty unhurt, but because his stupid face is stupid funny. Across the room he catches her grin and half returns it, fixing the way his hat fits on his head while saying something to one of the other guys before making his way over. She taps her knuckles against the bar and gets them two bullets worth of MacCready’s regular.</p>
<p>“Two for me or are we splitting?” He asks, elbows on the bar and shoulders just a little bit bent. Olive leans back, elbows on the bar and chest out. She doesn’t really have a chest. Well, it’s starting to come in but it really isn’t anything to write home about so she’s not, like, trying to show it off or whatever when she chooses to stand like that. It’s just comfortable. Feels good on her shoulder. Whatever, right. Besides, it isn’t like MacCready would look at her tits anyway. Even if she had any to look at. Even if she wanted him to look.</p>
<p>“I out drink you nine times outta ten.”</p>
<p>“I know you’re not challenging me to a drinking contest right now.”</p>
<p>“MacCready, everything between us is a contest. And let’s be fucking honest with ourselves here, I’m a fucking champ and you’re a fucking loser and that’s pretty much what we discover each and every shitting time.” He’s already holding one of the glasses so she takes the other one. He’s still smiling while trying not to which makes her smile bigger. She runs her tongue over a tooth two or three in from the front that’s been feeling pretty loose since she got in a scuffle. Fists don’t really work so good for her.</p>
<p>“You’re a freaking champ? And I’m a freaking loser?” He snorts and tosses back his drink. She follows suit. MacCready’s already ordering them a second round. Olive’s stomach fills with warmth. From the booze, obviously, not the stupid fucking regular gesture of one Gunner picking up another Gunner’s drink.</p>
<p>“I said I’m a fucking champ, and you’re a fucking loser. You know, like,” she shrugs and pantomimes sexual intercourse the way all the other guys do, “fucking.” MacCready’s face flares red. He looks down as their drinks are placed on the bar, shakes his head a little as if it’ll clear that blush away.</p>
<p>Such a fucking pussy. She knocks back her drink. For a second she thinks MacCready isn’t going to, like she’s crossed some kind of line in their friendship and that it’s all over and done with. The heat in her stomach goes cold.</p>
<p>“Maybe you’re the champ at… that. But I don’t think you’ve ever outdrank me.”<br/>He takes his second drink slower, but he takes it, and Olive’s weird moment of panic disappears. So he doesn’t like sex jokes. She could’ve figured that. MacCready’s a soft ass shit pussy kinda guy. Maybe he’s never had sex before or something. She’s never had sex before either, but she guesses he doesn’t know that. And MacCready’s had to have had sex. He’s, well, she doesn’t know why she’s so certain he has. She just is.</p>
<p>Damn, she fucking hates this guy.</p>
<p>She thinks it winds up that they both stop at four. But she’s pretty much slumped back on the bar and he still looks pretty good. He throws her arm over his shoulder, holds her steady by the wrist while his other hand wraps its way around her hip. She stumbles, maybe cause she’s drunk or maybe for some other reason. Like MacCready’s feet are tangled with hers and his hand is on her hip and she’s pretty certain he’s leading her to her fucking cot.</p>
<p>When he lays her down the change in angle makes her dizzy and she throws up on his shoes. He doesn’t say anything, even though she’s been muttering “fuck” about a million times a minute and usually he tries to be on her with her language. She pretty much got raised with the Gunners, she wants to tell him, what does he expect her language to be like? But her eyesight is swimming and words aren’t really working out for her right now.</p>
<p>“Get some sleep.”</p>
<p>“Fuck.”</p>
<p>“You gotta take care of yourself, kid.”</p>
<p>And something about that hurts worse than the headache that’s brewing at the back of her skull so strong she can already feel tomorrow’s hangover. She presses her face into the cheap ass cot, hiccups painfully, and mutters “fuck” a few more times before she starts to drift towards sleep.</p>
<p>She fucking hates MacCready, but it doesn’t feel like so much fun anymore.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Olive’s quieter than usual when she’s setting up her gun. They haven’t been paired up in awhile so at first MacCready was a little excited by the assignment. He doesn’t really like the Gunners but Olive isn’t so bad. She doesn’t do nearly as many of the fuc… bad stuff that the other guys do. She just curses a lot and lets herself get too drunk, and he can’t really fault her for those things. Pot calling the kettle or however that saying goes. But she seems out of it today. Even when they’d gotten orders earlier she’d just nodded and skulked away. Now that they’re outside in the sun MacCready has a nagging suspicion that he knows why.</p>
<p>She’s rubbing the underneath of her left eye, the one she keeps to the scope, trying to dispel some of the black and blue swelling. She’s got a mark on her chin too, and MacCready wonders that if he could see her arms if there’d be more bruises there. Her nailbeds are discolored, a little purple near where the cuticles are torn away. He swallows the mounting sense of disgust for the Gunners that’s been building in him for awhile now.</p>
<p>“You don’t look so good, kid,” he tries as an opening gambit. Olive just frowns and lines her eye up with her gun. MacCready frowns and does the same, though he can’t stop himself from sneaking glances to the side at her.</p>
<p>“Fucking ace compliment there, Dad, I appreciate it.” It’s been awhile since she’s called him dad. She stopped when they started being civil, when they started being friends. Her tone is biting so he figures she must be doing it to be hurtful. A part of him wants to just shrug it off and say whatever. If she wants to be a b… a, a baby about his concern then he doesn’t need to be concerned. The Gunners don’t mean anything more to him than a paycheck. Not friends. Not family. Not worth feeling the stabbing guilt in his chest when a bratty little girl decides she feels like hurting his feelings.</p>
<p>“Don’t call me that, all right?” He says instead. He fixes his stance and picks off one of the raiders in the distance. Olive fires a fraction of a second after him. The shot feels petulant, somehow. “I don’t like it.”</p>
<p>“Why?” There’s concern and curiosity beneath her casual question. MacCready grinds his teeth until they hit a painful edge. His eyes feel hot and sticky. His chest is tight and narrow.</p>
<p>Fuck, he thinks despite all his promises, I’m gonna fucking cry. He makes another shot while trying to calm himself down. It isn’t clean, and even as far back as they are the scream is clear. “I don’t actually think you’re my fucking dad or anything.”</p>
<p>“I just don’t like it.”</p>
<p>“My dad sold me to the Gunners cause my blood’s good for all kinds.” She says it like it’s nothing, like it’s the weather, like she’s asking for another bullet instead of rocking the foundation of their friendship. MacCready looks over at her, wide eyed. She does her best to ignore him but he can see the pink rising high and hot on her cheek. Humiliated. Humiliated because she wasn’t worth more than the blood in her veins to her own family. MacCready might be sick. “Wound up being not so bad, right? They let me shoot and I’m good and I get paid.” Her voice trembles. MacCready does her the favor of looking back into his gun. He shoots and misses his shot. Next to him Olive’s got her eye off her scope, but he doesn’t know what she’s looking at. He thinks she might be crying. “They take blood still, to keep stocked up, but everyone gives a little blood sometimes so it really isn’t a big deal. It’s more than my dad wanted for me.”</p>
<p>MacCready understands the bruises and the fatigue and even the sense of honest betrayal she’d had when he first arrived, another sniper here to take her place. She thought another sniper might push her back down to the blood farm. He wonders if it did, a little, since the only time they’ve put the needle in him was after a battle when they’d run out of blood packs. He wonders if any of her blood is running through his veins.</p>
<p>She makes a little noise that gets lost under the sound of his rifle firing.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry I called you dad,” she whimpers. MacCready closes his eyes for a moment because he can’t let himself cry while she’s crying. “Especially… I don’t fucking think you’re anything like him. You’re a good guy, MacCready, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>He wants to tell her about Lucy. About Duncan. He wants to share because she shared and she’s crying and it seems like a good way to comfort her would be to let her know a little about him. But he can’t make the words come out. They’re lodged in his throat good and hard. Shit, he thinks, shit, shit, shit. He doesn’t stop picking off raiders and eventually Olive calms herself down and rejoins him. He feels like garbage.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t mad,” he manages when their job is done. Through his scope he sees the Gunners gathering up the injured survivors with sick grins on their faces. He knows what comes next. It turns his stomach. “You shouldn’t watch this stuff.” He leans back and tugs Olive’s shoulder until she’s looking at him and not the rape and torture that’s about to go down. She’s been a Gunner longer than he has, and her damn dad sold her to these monsters, so he’s certain she’s seen worse. He isn’t actually protecting her from anything. But it’s the only thing he can think to do. Olive sniffles and he pulls her closer, accidently knocks her hat off her head as he presses her cheek to his shoulder. She lets loose another couple of empty sounding noises, like sobs that just don’t have the energy to actually be sobs.</p>
<p>MacCready stares off into the distance and thinks: shit.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>“I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”</p>
<p>Olive catches the subtle shimmer of another sniper’s scope out in the distance and lines her shot up nice and easy. She fires and touches her fingers to the pile of bullets shared between them. MacCready’s clearing out stragglers, one after another, and their fingertips brush over the bullets.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it’s fucking hot.” She pushes her hat back and shakes out her hair. It’s matted down and reeks of sweat. She doesn’t care though. Just her and MacCready up here. Things were weird for a while after she cried on him, but just like good friends do they put that emotional garbage behind them.</p>
<p>“That’s not what I mean,” he says, in this tense sorta voice she hasn’t heard him use since back when they were at each other’s throats. Or she was at his. He sounds real unhappy, real messed up. She frowns and follows the angle of his rifle with her own, tries to catch what he’s looking at that’s got him so upset.</p>
<p>Smith’s got a couple of women down below where the main team of Gunners are clearing out a settlement. One’s on the ground holding her face and screaming. The other’s holding the first but looks ten times as scared. One of ‘em is pregnant. Olive sucks on her loose tooth. Smith’s always gotta find a pregnant one. MacCready’s the type to let himself get all torn up over this sort of fucked up shit. Olive guesses she doesn’t blame him for it. Watching some of the Gunners run wild tugs at what’s left of her conscience. Mostly she doesn’t watch anymore. Kinda puts that issue to bed, y’know?</p>
<p>“Smith,” she says when she can tell that MacCready’s got himself worked up over it. She lines her shot up so Smith’s head’s in her sights. “If I had to choose one mother fucker to headshot,” she pulls the trigger and the rifle makes an empty click without a bullet in place, “it’d be that piece of shit.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you feel bad being a part of the fu-freaking stuff they do?”</p>
<p>“No. It ain’t me doing it.” She pulls the trigger again just to hear the empty noise, just to give her hands something to do. MacCready twists besides her. She’s got a weird feeling in her guts. Like something’s happening in the space between their bodies. “I mean, what’s there to do about it anyway?” She doesn’t like the silence dragging between them. It sets a spike of panic between her shoulder blades and makes it harder for her to pull her gaze away from Smith and the women. They’re both on the ground now.</p>
<p>“If you didn’t like it you could leave.”</p>
<p>Olive pulls her eye from the scope slowly, almost like she’s scared she’ll startle MacCready if she moves too quick. He’s frowning into his rifle, checking the settlement over and over even though there’s nothing left. She stares at him, stares hard, stares until she thinks he’s gonna tell her to fuck off or something. MacCready’s not that kind of guy though. The thought creates a pit in her stomach. She puts her eye back to her rifle and to Smith and his poor women.<br/>MacCready’s not that kind of guy. He’s not a Gunner type of guy.</p>
<p>“No one leaves the Gunners,” she says low. Her heart’s beating like she’s on something. “And I…” She feels something in her chest shift, make it hard to breathe for a second before clearing it up totally. Her resolve, she thinks. “I’m grateful to the Gunners. They could’ve bled me dry and they didn’t. They gave me a gun, gave me a fucking chance.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you ever think about how that could be you down there getting slapped around by Smith or Barnes or any of them?”</p>
<p>“No. I mean, yeah. I could’ve been like that. But I’m not. Cause of the Gunners.”</p>
<p>Holy fucking shit, she thinks as MacCready sighs and grumbles all at once. Her finger toys with the trigger. From the corner of her eye she watches him packing away their bullets. She fakes shooting Smith again, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it had just a second ago. MacCready’s gonna try to leave. He’s gonna fucking split. She should tell someone. She should stop him. She should convince him to stay by telling him he’s her only friend and she doesn’t hate him and the Gunners aren’t so bad so long as they’re together and fuck it, she’ll fuck him she’ll admit he’s better she’ll do anything but she doesn’t want him to leave because, because—</p>
<p>“You’re not like any of the Gunners,” she finishes her thought out loud. He grunts a response. Somehow the realization that she’s the same sort of person as Barnes and Winlock and Smith and the whole rest doesn’t sit as badly as she would’ve thought. She hates most of those fuckers, but the fact remains she’d rather be sitting here with a gun in her hands than anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>Even anywhere with MacCready.</p>
<p>…Especially anywhere with MacCready the way things are shaping up.</p>
<p>“Fucking shame, MacCready, fucking shame.”</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Two weeks later and MacCready’s fucking gone. Took the uniform. Took the gun. Took as much shit as his little dick could carry on the way out. Olive hopes he’s smart enough to run his skinny ass as far out’ve the Commonwealth as possible. She doesn’t wanna be the one that winds up with him in her sights.</p>
<p>It’s all well and good to fantasize about popping the tops off the skulls of her comrades—Winlock, Barnes, Smith, whatever—but MacCready? He’s not like the other Gunners.</p>
<p>And Olive doesn’t wanna find out just how much like them she is.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Olive's laying across an ammunition box with her hat pulled down to cover her entire face. Rifle loose across her stomach, feet tapping to someone's offbeat rendition of "Sixty Minute Man". She's trying to doze but it isn't working out. Everyone's being too loud and she doesn't exactly feel comfortable napping around these assholes.</p>
<p>She's been getting a little more attention since MacCready shit the bed on them. Maybe cause he isn't around to hog the sharpshooting spotlight. Maybe cause she's got more free time to notice that sort of thing. Whatever it is it's one hundred percent MacCready's fucking fault and she's pissed.</p>
<p>She pushed that loose tooth out last week so if she ever decides to smile again it'll be a little less appealing, put a few of them off whatever sort of things they're thinking. Fucking atomic wasteland out there but vanity remains constant. Comforting, sorta, if you're looking for a quick fix to get some hungry eyes off you. Which Olive is.</p>
<p>Of course, now she's got a gap among her only kinda straight teeth and whenever she pokes her tongue through the hole she thinks of that fuckhead.</p>
<p>Y'know. MacCready.</p>
<p>Barnes said he's been grabbing gigs outta Gunner territory and stepping on all kinds of toes. Got that ghoul from Goodneighbor on his side though so he's not quite as dumb as he fucking looks. Still pretty fucking dumb. Running out on the Gunners and then sticking around to watch the shit fly, sticking his hand in the shit to give it a little spin.</p>
<p>Thinking about MacCready makes her angry. At him, for leaving her. At herself, for letting him go. At everything, pretty much. She rolls off the box, landing with an awkward grace onto her feet. She looks out at the busted up remains of the Mass Pike, Gunners' camps looking way more quiet than the one she's stuck in.</p>
<p>Something down below catches her eye. She frowns and leans towards the edge of the fallaway she's standing by. What the fuck's moving down there? Shit's supposed to be all cleared out.</p>
<p>"Hey," she calls aimlessly behind her, "there's something down there." The one Gunner is still singing and a couple of others are laughing either at him or at a joke Olive didn't hear. She frowns and scuttles closer to the edge, picks up her gun and looks through the scope. "Hey, assholes," she says a little louder but her stomach has that nervous pre-fight feeling and it keeps her from shouting. "I got movement over here."</p>
<p>"So, shoot it and shut up," Barnes growls. She sends a pissy look over her shoulder. When she looks back to the ground below she can't find any sign of anything amiss. It makes her feel worse, like maybe she imagined it or is losing it or that something serious is about to go all kinds of wrong.</p>
<p>The lift clunks to life loudly. The camp pauses, freezes at the out of place sound. Olive sees Winlock counting their heads. She bunkers down behind a small scrap of overturned concrete and nestles her rifle's muzzle out just enough. Her heart rate kicks up, hard enough and fast enough that the most recent track mark in her elbow actually hurts. She thinks a slew of curses to calm herself down. Profanity like a backwards sort of meditation for her fucked up little soul. Or whatever. She doesn't think she believes in that kinda shit. And even if she did she isn't the kinda person that'd have a soul. She's a bad fucking person. Right? Yeah. A fucking Gunner through and through. She doesn't give a shit about shit.</p>
<p>It seems forever before the lift reaches the top. Olive only gets a split second to see the woman in the blue jumpsuit step off, shooting a shotgun with exactly the kind of low effort aim you expect from a person with a shotgun. Not a raider. Just some kind of fucking psycho. Two fucking psychos, she amends as a second figure appears in her view. A stealthier figure that gets set up under some cover. Olive smirks and gets her shot lined up.</p>
<p>That's about when she sees that the sneaky psycho is fucking MacCready. She'd recognize the line of his stupid shitty jaw anywhere, and for fuck's sake he's still got on his Gunner hat. What the shit is he thinking? She wants to scream in frustration, in horror, in something too complicated for her mind to parse out.</p>
<p>Bullets are flying but she hasn't fired once yet. Her rifle is aimed tight on MacCready. Headshot. Kill him quick. Make a mess so she wouldn't be able to pick his face outta the pieces.</p>
<p>Her stomach hurts so she switches targets, gets the blue outfit weirdo between the crosshairs. The woman's got blood on her, but Olive thinks it's Gunner blood. Her blood. She shivers and shoots, clips the woman's shoulder even though it should've been a one shot kill. She reloads, hands managing to be steady despite the way she feels. In the chaos the only thing she can think is: MacCready, you stupid piece of shit I hate you so damn much. I'm gonna have to kill you. You're gonna make me kill you. I don't wanna fucking kill you. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.</p>
<p>A Molotov cocktail breaks apart just to the right of her. When they used to set up that's where MacCready always was, but MacCready didn't throw the cocktail the woman in blue did, and it takes Olive a moment to realize her uniform is on fire and it fucking hurts. She drops her grip on her rifle and rolls, swatting the flames with her still stupidly steady hands. She continues to roll, fighting the urge to scream and cry and failing pretty fucking miserably. She rolls until her shoulder slams against something hard and square, the ammunition box she'd been using as a cot, and the panic in her chest is suddenly cold and certain with the way this is all about to turn out for her.</p>
<p>The flames catch.</p>
<p>The box explodes.</p>
<p>And Olive thinks: Guess I wasn’t much of a fucking Gunner anyway.</p>
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